Torson watched the Commodore. The Commodore managed a mostly impassive face, but his lips twitched at the news. As good as a loud profanity from the tightly controlled man.
The Normandy had arrived in system over a day before and the Lars Jorgenson was due at any time with some accompanying patrol craft. The Warrior was expected within the day. Extremely inconvenient timing for the SDF on the pirates part.
The Commodore glanced over at Torson. Torson's annoyance must have been showing on his face. The Commodore smiled thinly. "Hopkins again. Such precisely unfortunate timing can't be an accident. We're just lucky they didn't call the bluff they must know we've been making."
"Yes, sir," Torson said. It was true if Hopkins had indeed managed to leak the Task Force's deployment details the pirate leadership must have known how weak the SDF forces in system were. Either they didn't trust that intelligence or there was some other reason they hadn't taken advantage of it. Maybe they didn't trust some of their captains wouldn't bolt if they were allowed to operate independently. It was impossible to tell. Damned pirates.
Lieutenant-Commander Agner touched Torson's arm lightly as the Commodore turned back to face the bridge's main displays. She'd might as well told him outright to calm down except the little gesture went unheard by the rest of bridge crew.
"Lieutenant Connelly," the Commodore said to his ops and navigation officer. "Please, check the plot for a rendezvous of all substantive units at point Delta One calculated to allow us to stay well out of engagement range."
"Sir?" Torson asked.
The Commodore gave Torson a hard look. No commanding officer cared to be questioned on his own command deck. Torson's implied question could be career limiting. "The pirate base isn't going anywhere," he deigned to reply. "Their fleet is leaving. We must determine where they're going and at least degrade them if we can. Satisfied Lieutenant?" he said before turning away from Torson.
Torson swallowed. The moment he'd been dreading had come. "Sir, please check your standing sealed orders folder for orders set Oscar," he said as the Commodore turned stiffly back towards him. "Passphrase 'Bouncing bunnies frolic amidst the jube-jube trees on Halloween' Thank you, sir," Torson said with all the formal calm disciplined respect he could manage given the weight of the moment.
Waving his flag comms officer, Lieutenant Olsen, away the Commodore bent over his console and punched a series of commands in. He read what appeared on his screen with a frozen face.
Straightening he turned to Torson and said, "Very well Lieutenant, what would you recommend?"
Torson couldn't help but let out a breath in relief. There was a lot the Commodore wasn't saying. He wasn't saying how irregular the order from Admiral Arain overriding the Commodore's decisions were. He wasn't saying he suspected those orders had likely been intended for the circumstance in which the Commodore himself had turned out to be the suspected mole. Most of all he wasn't saying he objected to taking orders from a lieutenant not in his chain of command that would clearly require him to risk his ships and men against his better judgment.
Torson thanked whatever deities existed for the Commodore's self-discipline.
"Sir, our orders are to prioritize the destruction of the pirate leadership, their base, and their fighting ships in that order," Torson bit out in the best tradition of the Academy he'd never attended. "To that end a concentration off all substantive units at the pirate base at their best individual times is indicated."
The Commodore nodded grimly. It meant coming out of hiding and exposing themselves to defeat in detail.
"A fighter squadron should be launched immediately to interdict all departures from the base," Torson continued. "Patrol craft group Phantom should continue to simulate our main force and move to pursue the pirate's fighting fleet as they move towards jump point Delta One."
"They're going to know something is odd when they see two carriers," the Commodore commented.
"Yes, sir," Torson agreed, "but they won't know which one is real. Sir, I think the pirate's top leader is still on the base. The captains of the fighting fleet most likely won't fight. They're escaping crooks."
The Commodore just nodded again. Torson knew he wouldn't express his reservations aloud.
"Bad news, sir," Torson said. "Is that they've almost certainly got hostages on that base they're going to threaten to kill if we don't let them go."
"And we can't let them do that, can we?" the Commodore said.
"No, sir."
"Very well. I see," the Commodore said. Turning back to the rest of the bridge, he spoke, "Flag, bring the Casablanca to battle stations. Ready a fighter squadron for immediate launch."
"Yes, sir!" Flag Captain Doria snapped.
* * *
Jeannie concentrated on being a good little puppet.
A quiet unobtrusive puppet that the very busy Pirate Chief would hopefully cease paying much attention to.
She was also trying to keep a bland calm expression on her face while being observant. Darting eyes and an expression of horrified disgust would not help her cause.
It wasn't that easy.
Standing on a staircase behind the happy excited Pirate Chief her view of the crowd of hostages below her wasn't quite as excellent as his.
Still she had a good view of hundreds of the many thousands of individual hostages. She could see them, hear them, smell them, and most of all feel them.
It was a discordant multi-sense poem of human misery.
Some of them, a few mostly middle aged men, appeared stoic. Whatever they felt inside they hid behind blank expressions much like hers and just sat or stood staring through the unhappy people around them.
Younger men, few in number but more noticeable than their follow prisoners, raged at the world, swearing loudly or in mutters, they pulled and yanked at their restraints, and looked around wildly at the instruments of death surrounding them looking for an angle they could use to save themselves.
Some of the younger women did likewise, but mostly they stood limply or sat in heaps, and sobbed and whimpered. It was almost as trying as the constant undercurrent of crying babies.
There weren't many crying babies, but it was an observable fact that it didn't take many crying babies to tear at one's heart strings. Those close to them showed signs of an extra degree of miserable unhappiness.
The odd knots of older children, the families of pirates insufficiently attached to them one had to think, were more subdued. A quiet bewildered but fearful demeanor seemed the most common among them.
The older men and women were mostly quiet too. They sat trying to make themselves comfortable exuding hard, dry and bitter resignation.
One individual caught Jeannie's eye. She tried not to look directly at her. She was a young girl, maybe not quite into puberty, or maybe just very thin she had long dark brown almost black hair tightly worked into long beribboned pigtails.
She was dressed in a rather dumpy fashion, but the clothing was substantial and clean. There was no adult obviously associated with her, but it did seem as if someone had cared.
The child herself played quietly with a ball and stick occasionally looking up and around. She appeared intelligently aware but completely and calmly indifferent. Cynically so, when her eyes touched on the demonstratively grief struck the corners of her lips and her eyebrows would twitch with what seemed like detached amusement.
Or at least it seemed so to Jeannie watching from a distance. She wondered if she was projecting. The kid chilled her to the bone. What did take to make a child like that?
"Children are adaptable," the Doctor standing next to her said. "Arrogant in their ignorance. Cynically pragmatic, they only really believe in what they've directly experienced in their short limited lives. We become more superstitious as we grow older. They're perfect little barbarians. If adults weren't hard wired to find children cute and adorable the species would have long since died out."
Jeannie was horrified to realize the Doctor had been watching he
r with such attention. "Interesting," she said in tones intended to convey exactly the opposite.
The Doctor smiled at her. It was if he was thinking "I see you and I know your game" but he said nothing aloud. He turned aside to look at the Pirate Chief.
The Pirate Chief was barely containing his happy agitation.
"He's wired to enjoy making an impact," the Doctor said in a soft voice just short of a full whisper. "The nature of that impact, good or bad, not being relevant. He just wants to change people's lives."
Jeannie said nothing.
The Doctor glanced her way. "Your control is quite good, but I can see you disapprove." He paused and gave a shake of his head. "Surely its clear that if an organism is to accumulate power it must have a taste for it, some sort of desire for it? I hadn't thought you bound by orthodox pieties."
Jeannie continued to say nothing and the Doctor returned his attention to the Pirate Chief who was dividing his attention between the scene below him and some sort of small terminal device. It was like he was checking the time waiting for something. Jeannie wondered what.
She soon found out. One of his flamboyant thugs ran to him and indicated the job of rigging the hostages for destruction was done. He passed a small detonator to the Pirate Chief. It had a large button thickly painted with bright red enamel paint. If you only paid attention to the pirates it seemed like a big boyish prank.
They soon moved off up the stairs. Jeannie was carried along in her body that the Doctor controlled. They had learned not to trust her to move under own power. It gave her a sore neck but the Doctor was careful and skilled. Had to say that much for him.
It was unfortunate for Jeannie. She needed not only for the Pirate Chief and his guards to be distracted, she needed the Doctor busy with something else that required him to relinquish his control of her.
One of two things had to happen. One, something had to happen that needed the Doctor's full attention. Or, two, something had to happen that required her moving with more dispatch than could be managed under the Doctor's direct control. She could see no way for her to create such circumstances.
She could only wait for events to favor her. She hoped not in vain.
It was a slow climb up the stairs and through the now empty corridors of the base to the main docking bays. It became clear that Pirate Chief was becoming annoyed by how much her measured robotic pace slowed them down. By the time they reached the docks all the other pirates had departed on their ships. Only echos of the docking clamps release remained.
Jeannie imagined the Pirate Chief would have liked to have seen the last of his followers off. He had an image to maintain. If so he managed to suppress any annoyance he felt. His face was still as he looked around, he sniffed and listened like some large humanoid fox.
"Great!" he announced. "The game is afoot." Turning to the Doctor he declaimed, "The tide of affairs waits for no man. Follow me at your best speed. I'm for the control room to acquaint the SDF with the dire choices they face. It must be timed just right." With that he rushed off towards the traffic control room that overlooked the docking bays. His two zombie like guards trailed him closely. The Doctor and Jeannie followed as best as they could.
They reached the traffic control room to find the Pirate Chief in mid-spiel.
"... the fate of these innocents is in your hands," the Pirate Chief was saying while waving a hand at a large screen behind him. It showed multiple scenes of the hostages in the former marketplace.
"Be content with saving them and leave me and mine to go our ways," he declaimed in unctuous tones.
In front of the Pirate Chief, and doubtless out of sight of the camera beaming his image to the SDF commander, large displays showing the tactical situation hung from the ceiling above the transparent windows through which the docking bays were visible. Those screens showed that the pirate fleet had just broken atmosphere, and not one SDF force but three. Two of them supposedly formed around carriers.
The SDF had only a few dozen carriers of all classes to cover all of human settled space. The deployment of the Casablanca to the sector had been major news. Jeannie thought she would have heard if a second carrier had been dispatched to the region. No, one of those carriers was fake. The Pirate Chief wasn't the only one blowing smoke.
"Perhaps these many hapless innocents are too unknown to anyone important to be worth the sympathy of the Federation," the Pirate Chief was saying.
What new line was this?
The Pirate Chief gestured to the Doctor. Jeanne found herself being marched in front of the camera the Pirate Chief was addressing. That worthy whipping out a large gaudy pistol in one hand, seized her with the other. Putting the pistol to her temple he addressed the camera. "This is Jeannie Chang. She's heir to the Chang trading clan as well as being young and photogenic. Is she worth the sympathy of the Federation's hounds?"
Jeannie did her best to look terrified. She had already had enough of the Pirate Chief's attention. She didn't want to raise his ire by deviating from whatever his script was.
"Have no doubt if we are not left to go our own ways this important and well connected young lady will meet her end here," the Pirate Chief sneered into the camera. He played the role of a demented madman quite well.
No one could doubt he was willing to kill both Jeannie and thousands of other hostages at this point. Additionally neither would they fully realize what a calculating snake he was, dangerous to let go free.
Releasing his hold on her the Pirate Chief made a chopping gesture behind her back. The Doctor reached out and pressed some buttons. The feed going out to the system switched from the Pirate Chief's show to a random series of shots of hostages from the marketplace.
"Good," the Pirate Chief said to the Doctor seeming entirely rational now. "That should have got their attention."
"You're sure you wanted their attention?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes, quite sure," the Pirate Chief said. "I had to get them to over commit themselves despite their better judgment. It's important they don't have forces uncommitted to deal with unexpected events like a fleeing stealthy scout."
"Strangely specific and maybe a little a hopeful," the Doctor replied with as close to humor as he ever got.
"Ideally they split their forces sending the better part after our fleet," the Pirate Chief replied. "Still even if they divert everything to trying to save the hostages here at the base while they're busy coming in the front door we'll exit by the back door. If we're lucky we'll catch their marines in the explosions set up for the hostages and that'll have their leadership's full attention just as we're making our departure."
"So it's all slight of hand," the Doctor commented. He knew how the Pirate Chief enjoyed explaining how clever he was. It was after all a feature he'd put in place.
"Yes, and like all slight of hand it depends on being quick and deft," the Pirate Chief said looking at Jeannie. "We don't have time for how slow it is to move her in puppet mode. Free her up, but if she deviates from the script you stun her." Turning to one of his zombie guards he said, "Jack, you keep an eye on her too. She acts up shoot her.
Jeannie looked at the Pirate Chief.
He looked back. "I want you alive, but trip me up at this point and I'll sacrifice you. Don't doubt it. Behave," he said.
"Yes, sir," she said lying.
* * *
Jeannie behaved herself.
It wasn't easy. The trip back through the ex-marketplace full of hostages was proving to be hell.
Somehow the hostages' plights didn't pull at her heart strings the way they had a short time ago when she'd first seen them. Could she have become desensitized so quickly? Or maybe the hostages were more subdued and resigned to their fates. Still the unhappiness roiling off the people around her was disturbing.
It puzzled her that even manacled and restrained as they were that the hostages did not fight back or rail against the Pirate Chief. It baffled her that'd he'd risk himself among them with such a small party.
Whatever else she'd thought of the Pirate Chief she'd not doubted his mental competence. Their trip through the desperate men and women in the marketplace, who had little to lose and could conceivably want nothing more than to take the Pirate Chief to oblivion with them inclined her to reevaluate that view.
Indeed the Pirate Chief himself was perhaps feeling he'd made a mistake. His normal self confidence was showing cracks. He would walk ahead of the small party he led with quick jerky strides and then would stop to let them catch up. He looked all around with darting jittery glances. He frowned quickly at different hostages, staring old women and young men down both. His impatience was palpable. He was edgy in a way Jeannie had not seen before. Was he worried? About what?
"Humans are social animals," the Doctor said in a low confidential voice. "We're not made to cold bloodedly ignore the sufferings of others. We're not even hard wired to deal with large groups. My techniques can channel a person's natural emotions and manipulate the abstractions they use to explain the world to themselves. They do so with an amazing plasticity. They cannot alter the basic substrate."
The Doctor was doing his creepy mind reading trick again. "He's feeling guilty?" Jeannie asked in a near whisper.
"He's not able to see that he has anything to feel guilty about," the Doctor answered. "He's just doing what makes sense in the circumstances. It's nothing personal. He is disturbed though for no reason he can understand or admit. His uneasiness is expressing itself in this edgy paranoia he's showing. I suggest you continue to do nothing to aggravate it."
Jeannie just nodded. There was a clear area through the hostages chained on either side of the main market throughfare they were walking down, but the hostile crowds to either side of them certainly unsettled her and she wasn't even the object of their anger. Somehow they gave her the feeling of a mad beast that might reach out, snatch, eat one of them at any time.
She picked her way down the middle of their path as carefully and quietly as she could. It was hard to believe that this open air dungeon had been a thriving market just a day ago. She looked around trying to identify landmarks. With a flash she realized they were approaching the place where Sam's Seafood store had been.
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